101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century (*so far)

On the surface, Emerald Fennell’s 2021 Writers Guild Award-winning Original Screenplay is a kind of feminist riff on the Death Wish franchise: At bars, Cassandra feigns near-blackout drunkenness to lure and then punish “nice guy” predators who are one opportunity away from committing sexual assault. But Fennell told the Los Angeles Times that she wanted to write “a revenge journey a real woman might go on,” not one involving guns. “In what ways can we exercise power, threaten or terrify?” Fennell said. “Cassandra knows, because she is an expert at existential dread, partly because she is riven with it herself.”

READ: With her feature premiere Promising Young Woman, Emerald Fennell creates a funny, horrifying world unto itself.